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Mr. Guterres said he hoped that the resolution would help the U.N. and aid agencies deliver more food, water and medicine to people in Gaza, but said that the only way to truly address the crisis was to end the fighting.
“A humanitarian cease-fire is the only way to begin to meet the desperate needs of people in Gaza and end their ongoing nightmare,” he told reporters after the vote.
The Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, thanked President Biden and other U.S. officials for “standing on Israel’s side” throughout the negotiations and “maintaining defined red lines.”
“The resolution maintains Israel’s security authority to monitor and inspect aid entering Gaza,” Mr. Erdan said in a statement. He, too, criticized the Security Council for not condemning the Oct. 7 attack and added: “The U.N.’s focus only on the aid mechanisms for Gaza is unnecessary and disconnected from reality — Israel, in any case, allows the entry of aid on any necessary scale.”
Riyad H. Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., delivered an emotional speech to the Council, choking back tears while telling the story of a Palestinian girl who had lost her parents and two siblings in an Israeli airstrike on their house. She, too, was later killed in a strike on a hospital, he said.
“This resolution is a step in the right direction,” he said. “It must be implemented and must be accompanied by massive pressure for an immediate cease-fire — I repeat, immediate cease-fire.”
Currently, aid trucks that enter Gaza must travel from Egypt to Kerem Shalom in Israel for inspection, then return to Egypt and cross the border into Gaza — a process that U.N. officials said was cumbersome and untenable.
The United Arab Emirates and Egypt, which controls the Rafah border crossing, had wanted the U.N. to inspect aid shipments for weapons and other contraband, arguing it would streamline the process. But the United States argued that Israel must be involved in the inspection process for it to be workable.
Gazan health officials say about 20,000 people, many of them children and women, have been killed in Israel’s military offensive.
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